Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Bergström Vineyard Pinot Noir has a lovely light burgundy color with youthful violet-like tints at the rim of the glass. A classic aromatic bouquet of roses, violets, dried sweet and savory garden herbs, gingerbread, roasted meat, campfire and forest floor. This Pinot Noir is expressive with dark red fruits, cherries, black raspberries, plum and sweet spices and has a long, serious, fine tannin structure. This is a very serious wine and a classic in the making. Delicious now but holds so much potential for the future.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 Pinot Noir Bergström Vineyard unfolds slowly to cranberries and blackberries with savory accents of charcuterie, cracked pepper and dried herbs. The palate is elegantly styled, grainy and fresh with delicate fruit character and an uplifted finish.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Home of the first Pinot noir vineyard of the Willamette Valley, planted by David Lett of Eyrie Vineyard in 1966, today the Dundee Hills AVA remains the most densely planted AVA in the valley (and state). To its north sits the Chehalem Valley and to its south, runs the Willamette River. Within the region’s 12,500 acres, about 1,700 are planted to vine on predominantly basalt-based, volcanic, Jory soil.